Kidd

by Tom Seligson

315 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1983

Reviews

[Jimmy Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up because it's the basis for the "National Treasure" motion picture series. And you can tell from the author's pacing, story development and styling that the Disney films sourced their basic concepts from this work.

But a direct connection to the plot of either movie, it's not. Our protagonist is Marc Simon, a television host, who we meet as he is called from the west coast to New York to bury the professor/ grandfather who raised him. Upon arrival, Marc discovers that his history-loving grandfather died under mysterious, if not disreputable, circumstances: a heart attack while apparently in the midst of robbing a grave. With baggage from years apart, Marc wants to repair his grandfather's reputation, but that requires understanding his grandfather's actions.

While mulling this over, his grandfather's apartment is robbed of all work in process, and Marc is left With only scraps of information to decipher. There's a single close friend of his grandfather's to consult, and suddenly art dealers and thugs coming out of the woodwork seeing a valuable, missing, medieval artifact. Marc finds the whole mystery irresistible and, with the help of a part-time librarian (with secrets of her own), he begins doing serious investigation, which leads him on a tortuous route towards understanding the history of the major buccaneers in early American history.

It's a little slow-paced to be designated a "thriller," but the method of wading through the historical challenges is addictive, and I'm not surprised that a movie studio snapped this up and made something a bit more edgy out of it.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's no description and no cover art, so I can only say I'm pretty sure this is the book I read back in the eighties when I was probably 14 or 15. And the fact that I still remember it so fondly should tell you everything. This was a great story!!! Such an adventure! Now, forgive the fuzziness (it's been a few decades, you know), but it's essentially a treasure hunt in modern day New York. The down-on-his-luck protagonist...I want to say he's a journalist? I might be remembering that wrong. It might be "the girl" who's the journalist. Anyway, he ends up on the trail of a long lost buried treasure of the infamous pirate, Captain Kidd. Now, I'm not normally drawn to the pirate thing...Goonies, the first Pirates of the Caribbean, and that new John Malkovich/Blackbeard show not withstanding...but this was such a fast-paced, slam bang bit of fun, I couldn't put it down. I must've read it four times in, like, two years. It was just so much fun! I remember thinking, at the time, it would have made an awesome movie. Now it kind of reminds me of National Treasure, that Nic Cage movie. I need to order a copy and read it again, soon. I wonder if it'll still hold up....

EDIT: Haha! I just clicked over to Amazon to see if I could get it on my kindle app (I can't...have to order an actual paperback, quel horreur! ;-). But I was reading the author's bio blurb, and how hilarious! He sold the rights to Disney so they could use it as source material for National Treasure and the sequel. How funny is that?!? Seriously, though...Kidd deserves it's own movie treatment. Somebody dropped the ball, there.